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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Hotel Chelsea: commercialisation of the blog?

A number of alleged gurus, such as Hugh Hewitt, have recommended that businesses should set up blogs as a means of improving the public image of their company. This is not a strategy that overwhelms me with enthusiasm, but I suppose it has its merits.

Anyway, yesterday I got an email from the anonymous author of a new blog, which has the name Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea. The email was addressed to all 'lit-bloggers' and informed me that the new blog will focus on books, art, and music created by former and current residents of New York City's Hotel Chelsea.

So I paid it a visit.

Well, as blogs go, this is a very professional one. So professional, in fact, that it seems to me quite clear that this is a commercial enterprise, set up to spread the word about the Hotel Chelsea, and to attract custom. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing whatever. So long as we don't confuse it with something created by a part-time amateur, just for the love of the thing.

At present, the links to articles about the Chelsea, and to works produced by former residents at the hotel, seem to me to be a bit more rewarding than the posts. But the blog is (I assume) brand new, so that may change. Meanwhile, I am not sure that a post which tells us that the hotel has cockroaches is striking quite the right note to attract overnight guests -- but then who am I to tell New York hoteliers their business?

7 comments:

Andrew
said...

It's cute but transparently commercial--kind of a Chelsea "People Magazine." I see a lot of name dropping and cute comments, all of which I think is supposed to impress me about the Chelsea, but nothing of substance at all. But then I'm just a commoner.

If it was run by the hotel, my email to the site would have been answered with a cranky email reminding me that I still owe Stanley money. It was not. That, and the reference to cockroaches (never to be mentioned around Stanley), leads me to believe it's a chelsea fan who ahs taaken up residence in the place and is sharing his passion, not unusual.

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